The New York Daily News Gets It Wrong (Surprised?)

The New York Daily News committed a big time disservice to their readers by reporting a version of events that conflicted with the official report regarding the Planegate matter. Thomas DeFrank and Kenneth Bazinet do not wrap themselves in glory on this one.

From the first paragraph, they get it wrong:

The White House aide who okayed the $328,835 Air Force One photo-op flight around the Statue of Liberty last week was sacked Friday.

Actually, Caldera, according to the official report, was not responsible for authorizing the flight.

Instead, the military office decided to react to media inquiries, not to make a prior announcement, according to the review by Jim Messina, White House deputy chief of staff.

There are a couple of things odd with this statement. For starters, the report was prepared for Jim Messina, he did not author the report. Secondly, the deputy director, George Mulligan, did not anticipate any media reaction to the flight which I thought was a newsworthy aspect that went un-reported. That's why they opted to react to media inquiries.

"The FAA warned the military office that the media needed to be advised of the flight," said an administration source. "There were red flags."

Why does the Daily News provide anonymity for the source? It's not clear. Moreover, the report does not indicate that the FAA raised any red flags about advising the media. This quote seems to be gratuitous unless it's meant to add to the criticism of Caldera.

Caldera's office insisted the flyover was a "classified" mission.

Actually details about the flight were considered to be "for official use only." This is simply a caveat -- it's not a classification. There are only three classifications: confidential, secret, and top secret. It wasn't classified.

A prominent Republican official who specializes in damage control said: "This is a message from [chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel that you won't be fired for a mistake or a policy disagreement - but you will be fired for embarrassing the President. That's a good, strong message that needed to be sent."

Again with the gratuitous anonymous source. Why does the "prominent Republican official" not want to have his or her name disclosed? Moreover, it's untrue. The President turned a blind eye to Tim Geithner, Linda Solis, Ron Kirk, and Kathleen Sebelius who caused the President a fair amount of embarrassment for their tax problems. (We'll leave aside Joe Biden's gaffes for the moment.) Moreover, how does this official know that mistakes or policy disagreements are not a cause for firing?

If they got this wrong -- what else have they gotten wrong -- without the benefit of an official report?

Something Not Quite Right

With the Friday afternoon resignation of Louis Caldera, the White House is hoping that the matter of 'Planegate" will come to a close. Given the compliant state of the White House press corps, its likely that this issue has breathed its last. Although Mr. Caldera is not entirely blameless in this matter, it seems unlikely that he's the only one guilty of bad judgment.

Nonetheless, the critical question as to who initiated this endeavor remains unanswered. Mr. Caldera's office, according to the White House website, "...ensures that White House requirements are met..." In other words, he was paid to execute, not to think.

It seems that someone, with serious juice, requested the flyover. Curiously, according to the official White House report on the matter -- there is no discussion as to who got the ball rolling other than to note that coordination began in March.

If the Air Force is anything like the Army -- which I know a thing or two -- I suspect that several participating elements would have to sign off on the deal. It wasn't the Air Force's role to question the mission -- their function was to execute the mission. Colonel Scott Turner was the go-to guy who oversaw the planning and coordination. He answered to Mr. Caldera's assistant, George Mulligan.

Mulligan, in turn, notified Caldera about the planning of the mission and added that "...WH shouldn't catch any questions about it." (Mulligan, it seems, has a political tin ear.) Caldera claims not to have read it until after the event occurred. Moreover, Caldera claims to have had two email accounts and he reads one more frequently than the other and he had back spasms that compelled him to leave early which prevented him from reading the email.

Even if one accepted this argument at its face, it seems strange that the director and the deputy director failed to formally discuss this matter given the nature of the mission as they all knew it to be atypical. (There was a thirty second discussion that characterized as an "aside.") Moreover, it seems odd that the one who initiated the matter did not check in for a status update.

Mulligan then recommended that Caldera notify Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, or Jim Messina, the deputy chief of staff. Mulligan didn't see this as his responsibility and had assumed that the Air Force would handle the public relations.

Caldera didn't have a coherent explanation as to why he failed to notify Gibbs or Messina. In my experience, that suggests two possible reasons. First, he actually brain cramped and failed to pass the word on. Or, secondly, he was covering for someone and took the hit. It should be noted that Caldera did not formally authorize the mission -- his crime was that he failed to pass the word on the mission.

After the event, Caldera opted to take the hit for the team and it seems that his scalp was required to end the debacle.

The report accomplished its purpose -- assigning the blame to Caldera. Yet it still remains uncertain as to who started this matter in the first place.

Ruminations

GAFFE-IN: What was the purported upside when Barack Obama selected Joe Biden as his Veep? Delaware's dirty secret is now America's headache.

LUXURY: Recession, war(s), pandemic are in the headlines but our Congress is focused on, well, college football.

STRESSED: Rather than eyeing a college football championship -- perhaps Congress should be performing a "stress-test" on the government's ability to meet its current obligations? I can imagine why they would want to keep those results secret.

GHOSTS: There is probably more than meets the eye on Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party. Clearing the decks to permit a primary-free race for a 79 year old cancer survivor probably doesn't come cheap. So much for the Keystone State's youth vote, huh? Moreover, who told Specter that he was the indispensable man of the Senate?

SCARE FORCE ONE: Louis Caldera, was once a policymaker as the Secretary of the Army back in the Clinton era answerable to the Secretary of Defense Now, he's an overpaid order-taker and fall guy as the chief of the White House Military Office. Maybe he can't sell is DC-area home? It will be interesting to see if anyone gets fingered, much less, fired for the Air Force One photo op in New York.

OLD MATH: The dead tree version of the New York Daily News boasted 2.5 million readers. I suspect that they used the New Math that was popular in the 1960s. However, real numbers like 600K don't lie.

WEAK: Given the hype surrounding the book, I can't help but be unimpressed by the charges levelled against A-Rod. I'm not a member of the Alex Rodriguez fan club, but the author would have been better served going after real miscreants.